Tag: friends

I actually did it! I saw an intriguing recipe and made it-successfully!

This past week, I discovered a magical source of energy that allowed me to prepare multiple meals in advance. I became inspired to bake as a present for a friend who was turning 30, and then I couldn’t stop.

Everything I’ve made has involved cheese. In my fridge right now, I have over five kinds of cheeses, which admittedly is just average for me. I am most excited about this mini-frittata recipe that I found in an article titled, The Morning Meal, which was featured in a recent issue of diaTribe.

The recipe came from a food and diabetes writer named Catherine Newman, who edits a magazine called ChopChop which looks to have some great recipes that kids can help prepare.

For the recipe, check out her full article. There are also other diabetes-friendly, delicious, and Sunday morning appropriate recipes in her article!

I tested the frittatas out on a friend who doesn’t have diabetes – she was equally impressed. They were the perfect brunch meal paired with a little salad and buttered toast.

A couple more shout-outs:

Ricotta cheese – oh my gosh, ricotta cheese is so delicious. Now I have a bunch of it in my fridge that I’m eating with a spoon.

Even though I know it works, I forget that gratitude is a choice, like a lens you put into your camera to brighten the vibrancy. It always works, sometimes more than others, to heighten our focus on the present and make life something solid to hold on to.

During the two weeks I was traveling over my break between semesters, I slept on 2 different sofas and 6 different beds. The hospitality of my friends and family was heart rendering. I rolled in like a rambler and left full of good food, laughter, and strong coffee. I carried an increasingly buoyant load of love around with me from house to house. I am so exceedingly grateful that in my life I have people who I can feel connected to even when I’m miles away.

These are the people who bring a smile to my face as I’m falling asleep and whose very presence makes me feel healthy and whole. I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate the power of being present with each other, here at the start of this new year.

Twenty-eight years and I don’t think I’ve ever missed a Fall in the mountains – until now. The suburbs of Atlanta where I grew up never felt like home, but I still remember being instantly embraced by the mountains on family travels. When I was a little over a year old, my parents carried me up Mt. LeConte, swaddled against the misty cold in a trash-bag poncho. We spent weekends in our cabin in Toccoa, GA, nestled in a soft pine forest interspersed with tall poplars and beech trees.

During high school my dad and I traveled from Atlanta to Wesser, NC, on Friday afternoons so we could launch into the icy waters of the Nantahala and feel the crisp breezes that sweep through the gorge in early Fall. Needless to say, moving to Asheville a decade ago was more like coming home than leaving it.

In August of this year I loaded up my belongings and drove away from my rented bungalow, my roommate for the past four years, a street full of friends, my nephew who came into the world just a few months before, my job and my mountains. I’m pursuing an MPH at UNC Chapel Hill, so leaving my job felt like a natural progression. The telephone, email and even Facebook help me stay in touch with friends and family. But you can’t call the mountains. I’ve scrolled back through my photo reel, read my old poetry, and meditated with their image in my mind, but still my heart aches for them. Their support and unwavering presence has always inspired me to seek that sort of peace in myself.

Maybe it was an effort to be strong like the mountains, probably it was just self-protection, but I decided I needed to stay in the triangle over fall-break. I would never miss the woods in October, so a girlfriend and I decided to make our Piedmont backpacking dreams a reality.

“Well thanks for coming on this adventure with me today,” I said to my friend, without really thinking about it. We had planned to take a walk after class in the forest together and we accomplished that, but only because she stuck with me as I rode the waves of my blood sugar.

First as my post-lunch bg got up to 170 or so I stood by her at the bus stop, drowsy and dull. The bus was 11 minutes away so I suggested we walk down to the next stop or so, hoping that might bring me down a little. She pushed her bike alongside her and I tried to explain why I felt dizzy and why walking would help. Fifteen minutes later we got onto the bus and 45 minutes after that made it back to my house and my car, to the forest entrance, waited behind men in trucks doing something, and then onto the access road.

I loaded up my Ecuadorian fanny pack with glucose tabs and as we headed off into the woods I felt the muscles of my face and neck finally relax. Sometimes I hold tension when my blood sugar is high and I can’t exercise to bring it down but I also can’t take insulin because I’ll be moving soon. Since we had plans to walk together, I couldn’t just abandon my desires to walk in the forest and respond to high blood sugar by walking around campus in uncomfortable shoes to bring it down. I followed through. Sometimes I feel like following through is a rare event for me because blood sugar sidelines me. Or because I’m not feeling great I’ll decline plans with friends because I don’t want to drag them onto the rollercoaster with me.

We walked 2.5 miles in the splendid mid-October falling leaves, a little less luminescent here than in the mountains but still beautiful. Back at the parking lot I checked before driving and I was 67 mg/dl, so I suggested we wait while my bg came up. As I ate glucose tabs we talked about our classes. When I said, “I’ll check again, I think we can go now,” my friend admitted she had no idea what we were waiting on. People just don’t know! When you live so intimately with a condition you start to assume that it’s evident on your face or in your words, that people understand it like you do, but that is so rarely the case. I explained why before when my bg was high movement helped me feel better, and that when I am low I need to eat something. I explained why I would treat a mild low before driving vigorously with several glucose tabs whereas if I was just going back home I might eat one tab and then have a snack.

After I thanked her, back at my house, she thanked me for the education. I thought about the name of my (somewhat dormant) blog. Diabetes has a way of making everything an adventure because it always throws in that spice of unknown. You have to adapt to it constantly, get creative, think about solutions. You have to be willing to change plans, be thrown off course, and clamber back to your path. It’s like inviting that oddball friend on the road trip, the wild one who is always suggesting weird detours. How wrong my thinking was ten years ago when I was diagnosed: that life with this condition would be boring.

And maybe most importantly, letting my friend come along on the adventure of blood glucose with me and being vulnerable in that way created a deeper trust between us and gave to us both.